NH Audubon Loves Participatory Science, and You Should Too!
NH Audubon has a long history of working with volunteers and participatory scientists to gather data and learn more about New Hampshire’s birds. From decades-long projects to new initiatives that started just this year, the organization is mission-focused on protecting nature “for wildlife and for people.” And they see it through.
As the Community Outreach Coordinator, Anita Fernandez brings participatory science opportunities to the community. She greets new volunteers at tabling events across the state, brings in speakers for public events at any of the three NH Audubon Centers, plans the organization’s Annual Meeting, and is soon to take over the quarterly NH Audubon Book Club (the February book is Everyone’s Trash by local author Duncan Watson). Somehow, amidst all that, Anita found the time to start an entirely new project: the NH Audubon Nature Challenge. But she wanted to do it right, so she signed up for the UNH Citizen & Community Science Professional Development Course to learn more about designing projects that benefit both research and the volunteers.
Common Buckeye Butterfly taken at Williard Pond in Antrim, on the first day of the Nature Challenge. Photo by Anita Fernandez.
NH Audubon staff member Erin Burger prepares for the NH Audubon Nature Challenge with the iNaturalist app on the Silk Farm Sanctuary in Concord. Photo by Anita Fernandez.
The UNH Citizen & Community Science Professional Development Course is an online, six-week course that caters to practitioners interested in starting new projects or reinvigorating existing projects. Anita had a vision for what she wanted to do, and knew that NH Audubon valued participatory science as a method for involving constituents in legitimate scientific research that is data-driven. But taking the course gave Anita the opportunity to thoroughly consider the goals of the project and how volunteer data collection would benefit both the volunteers and the research. “The course gave some legitimacy to my pitch to the management team. I took this course, I fully developed this project, let’s implement it!” So, in June of 2024, the first NH Audubon Nature Challenge took place! During the last full week in June, volunteers traversed across 23 of the organization’s properties statewide to collect observations of plants, animals, fungi, and more. Even though this project is still very new, Anita sees its potential. “Hopefully over time, with more data, we’ll see differences in what wildlife are present, what plants are growing, and what changes are happening over time.” Understanding these changes can help the organization and its constituents advocate for policy changes to better protect New Hampshire’s natural environment.
The most well-known NH Audubon participatory project is probably the Backyard Winter Bird Survey, now in its 39th year! Leading that project is Grace McCulloch, NH Audubon’s Community Science Project Leader. She joined the organization in 2024 after completing her master’s degree at UNH studying saltmarsh sparrow populations. In her role, she runs many projects that rely on volunteer participation to be successful. Last year, over 1,900 participants submitted observations to the Backyard Winter Bird Survey alone. Without volunteers, that level of data collection and geographic coverage would be impossible. And these volunteer observations drive the research that NH Audubon does. They Backyard Winter Bird Survey actually started out in 1967 as the “Cardinal and Tufted Titmouse Project”, focusing solely on these new arrivals to the state. NH Audubon staff soon realized that the volunteers were collecting data on more than these species, and that they were documenting other unique observations of new arrivals to the state. After a few more iterations, the project as we know it today was established in 1987.
Even though the Backyard Winter Bird Survey has been running for almost four decades, Grace recognizes opportunities for improving the project and bringing in new volunteers. She also took the UNH Citizen & Community Science professional development course, which helped her envision how to make changes to the way data is collected and make the project more accessible to more people. Grace wants the data to be open to the volunteers who collected it, and to the public who can advocate for New Hampshire’s birds. Every year, NH Audubon sends out a report on the observations collected during the survey and trends detected across years. Grace is now creating a new website that allows people to access the data from all 39 years of the project and better understand how bird populations are shifting and changing across the state.
Eastern Bluebirds at a backyard feeder, photographed during the 2025 Backyard Winter Bird Survey. Photo by Caitlin McMonagle.
Who can participate in these projects? Anyone! While the bird survey can seem intimidating, Grace emphasized that this is a great time of year for new birders to get started. “Winter birds are more approachable, there’s less of a diversity of bird species during this time of year. And you can do the survey from your window!” The 2026 Backyard Winter Bird Survey will run from February 14-15 and takes as little as 15 minutes of observation. NH Audubon also provides some awesome guides to help you identify common birds. Learn more here if you’re interested, and keep an eye out for their new website launch coming this winter! And while the NH Audubon Nature Challenge isn’t until June 21-27, it’s always a great time to check out the project. And while you’re at it, check out all the events hosted by NH Audubon!
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